GAZA STRIP Militants' rocket hits Israeli city

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Palestinian militants hit an Israeli city with a rocket from Gaza for the first time on Tuesday, causing no casualties but drawing a pledge of harsh retaliation from Israel while it was already in the midst of a military offensive.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the rocket fire on the coastal city of Ashkelon a "major escalation," coming just hours after a deadline set by the militants holding an Israeli soldier passed with Israel rejecting demands to release about 1,500 Palestinian prisoners. The militants said they would not harm 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit -- if he is still alive. But they warned they would provide no further information about him, leaving his condition unclear.
The rocket flew 7 miles through the air and exploded in the courtyard of a school in Ashkelon, a city of 110,000 on Israel's coast north of Gaza. The school was empty at the time and no one was hurt. School security cameras showed a large cloud of white dust rising from the point of impact.
Early today, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a Hamas camp in southern Gaza, Palestinians and the Israeli military said. No casualties were reported.
Zeev Schiff, veteran military analyst for the respected Israeli Haaretz daily, wrote that the rocket attack was "an unequivocal Hamas invitation to war."
Adding pressure
Israel launched the Gaza offensive, punctuated by nightly airstrikes, to put pressure on Shalit's kidnappers -- Hamas-affiliated militants who seized the soldier in a June 25 cross-border raid. But the militants responded with defiant demands for the release about 1,500 prisoners from Israeli jails.
On Monday, the Hamas-affiliated militants set a 6 a.m. Tuesday deadline for Israel to begin complying and implied they would kill Shalit if it refused. But the deadline passed without event and a spokesman for the Army of Islam, one of the three groups that kidnapped Shalit, said the militants "decided to freeze all contacts and close the case on this soldier."